Elizabeth and Jonathan, thank you so much for representing us in what was obviously an uncomfortable situation. Elizabeth, I understand your feeling that you need a shower. (I would need a bourbon as well.)

>Feel Kaytee would welcome us into their facilities (Pet Central headquartered in Walnut Creek).

I did some research on this recently, trying to find out more about Kaytee Preferred Bird, which seems to stay under-the-radar.

Kaytee is owned by a much larger company, Central Garden and Pet, which is headquartered right here in Walnut Creek. You can see their web page at http://www.central.com/.  The attached jpeg, clipped from their 2009 Annual Report, gives a high-level idea of how diversified they are. It’d be really easy to hide a bird breeding or live bird distribution branch in their company where it wouldn’t be visible to shareholders or even to many employees. I don’t even think that such a comparatively small operation, revenue-wise, would necessarily  warrant mention in their 10K if it were generating bad publicity, which it has.

So the fact that I don’t see a “Kaytee Preferred Birds” mentioned on their web page or in their annual report or 10K is not a surprise to me. However, Central Pet, owned by Central Garden and Pet and on the web at http://www.centralpet.com/, is a distributor of supplies from dozens of vendors to pet stores of all sizes. Nowhere on Central Pet’s web site do they claim to distribute live animals to pet stores, but nowhere do they deny it either. I am guessing that this is where they keep the function formerly performed by Kaytee Preferred Birds. Hearing Elizabeth say that they would let us look at “Pet Central” reinforces my belief that this is where they do their live bird distribution. I think that we should take them up on their offer and learn as much as possible about what goes on there.

--VH